


A Magical Itch

by kashinoha



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Footnotes, Humor, Post-Series, typical British snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 11:49:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4099876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kashinoha/pseuds/kashinoha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Childermass tries to read the King’s Letters, with help from Vinculus—whether he wants it or not. Spoilers for the end of the series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Magical Itch

**Author's Note:**

> With this story, I tried to both include a lot of little details from the novel and combine them with some of the details the TV adaption has provided us. Overall, this was a lot of fun to write. I feel like Vinculus kind of makes Childermass the straight man, and their rapport throughout the series is so interesting. Hope you all enjoy reading!

**A Magical Itch  
**

All characters © Susanna Clarke

 

 

 

John Segundus bit the end of his quill pen. It was a rather nasty and unsanitary habit, he was aware, yet Mr Segundus could not bring himself to stop. To-day he bit not out of nerves but out of excitement, hardly able to calm himself. This was it: the closing publication notes for _The Life of Jonathan Strange._ He had finally finished. The year was 1820.

Mr Segundus wet his quill with ink and brushed a skein of hair away as it fell into his eyes. Thin flecks of grey striated his once black hair like silver glass shards catching moonlight. Mr Segundus wrote, growing increasingly more enthused with each flourish of his quill. He sat in his office, a large, chestnut and gold wood room of what was now the new and improved York Society of Learned Magicians. It had become an institution by day, a society by night, and it was his. Well, mostly.

With a final, scribbling signature Mr Segundus finished the letter (addressed to John Murray) and called for Honeyfoot. Or he would have, if his bell had been in reach. Alas, he had left it by the window sill for reasons he could not remember. Mr Segundus made to rise from his chair, but sat back down again and contemplated the bell thoughtfully. He touched a finger to his lips, letting his eyes fall shut. Then he took a breath in through his nose, whispered something that only he could hear, and waved his hand in the direction of the bell. The bell rose a foot in the air and began ringing steadily.

Looking pleased, Mr Segundus let it jingle a moment longer until he heard the rapid footsteps of Mr Honeyfoot approaching.

“You called, Mr Segundus?” Mr Honeyfoot was out of breath and slightly red-faced. His hair was beginning to thin at the top.

Mr Segundus nodded. “I have a letter for Mr Murray,” he said, handing Mr Honeyfoot the envelope. Mr Honeyfoot took it with a smile and shining eyes.

“Congratulations, Mr Segundus!” he exclaimed, surveying the letter with approval. “I believe a celebration is in order, is it not?”

“It is too early yet to celebrate, Mr Honeyfoot. With my luck all the copies of this book may vanish, as Strange’s own books did,” said Mr Segundus, all at once looking pained. He possessed a little voice at the back of his mind that warned him (irrationally, and at length) that everything could fall apart at any minute. He had never quite learned to ignore the little voice, and the rational part of him knew it was all codswallop.

 Apparently, so did Mr Honeyfoot. He tutted and clapped Segundus on the back. “What are you talking about, man? Your luck has been nothing but good ever since Strange and Norrell disappeared.”

Not entirely convinced, Mr Segundus decided to change the subject. “I believe it is Wednesday,” he said. “Have we a meeting to-night with the Society?”

“Childermass is out of town,” said Mr Honeyfoot, shaking his head.

“Out of town?” Mr Segundus frowned. “Where might he be?”

“Derbyshire,” Honeyfoot replied. “You told him he could go last week, do you not remember?”

“Ah, yes, yes. I recall that now,” replied Mr Segundus as he rubbed the skin between his eyes with an index finger and thumb. Mr Honeyfoot laughed.

“I think you work too hard, Mr Segundus,” he said. He paused, considering something he had not before. “Did Childermass say what his business was in Derbyshire?”

“I believe he’d found a relative of the last Reader of the King’s Letters.”

“Ah. And was Vinculus accompanying him?” Mr Segundus gave a nod, which made Mr Honeyfoot smile again. “Ironic, is it not?”

“What is, Mr Honeyfoot?”

“That the two men who should truly return magic to England in a respectable fashion be a beggar and a servant,” said Honeyfoot.

At this, Mr Segundus managed a smile. “Actually, I do not find it ironic at all,” he said.

Mr Honeyfoot walked over to a nearby window, becoming enveloped in the warm raxeira of the afternoon sun. He shook his head again and chuckled to himself. “What a sight those two make,” he exclaimed. “I hope they do not frighten anybody off on their journey.”

 

 

 

“That,” Childermass growled, buttoning his coat, “is the last time I shew you to anybody of a respectable nature.”

Vinculus, who was eating an apple with a bruise on one side, cackled. “It worked though,” he said. “And I’d hardly call a farmer _respectable.”_

“He was a gentleman nonetheless.” Childermass grit his teeth. “And you _stripped_ in front of his mistress.”

“Well who was I supposed to strip in front of, then? She had no business walkin’ in.”

“It was her house,” argued Childermass.

Vinculus shrugged, taking another bite out of his apple. “Her problem, then.”

The English countryside had bloomed around them. Everything, down to the trees and the wild Greek valerian, seemed more vibrant, as if they were singing.1 The warmth of a spring afternoon prompted Childermass to tie his dark hair away from his neck with a ribbon. Despite the weather, he continued to dress primarily in black. The son of the Raven King, some at the Learned Society had taken to calling him.

Vinculus, in turn, was regarded with a kind of repulsed fascination, not unlike some particularly noxious circus animal. Anybody of a normal sort would have found this insulting, yet Vinculus did not seem to mind. He allowed others to document the runes and symbols on his body—which, at first, presented a problem since it had been several years since Vinculus had bathed and many of the Letters were concealed beneath a fine layer of dirt. Vinculus shewed no desire to wash himself, claiming there were all sorts of diseases in the water. Giving his previous squalid living conditions, few understood the magician’s reasoning.

“I am not getting any younger,” Vinculus had protested. “Just wait for a storm, and I shall be as right as rain. Hah! Get it?” He proceeded to laugh then, and despite many attempts, no one could talk him into a shower. Eventually, the Learned Society of York Magicians called upon the one man capable of handling him.

The task of bathing Vinculus befell Childermass in the end, much to his chagrin. It is something neither man speaks of to this day.

At present, Vinculus was clothed in an outfit Childermass had purchased for him some three years back. Plain but more sightly than his former getup, the outfit consisted of pantaloons, a washed-out cream blouse, and a grey coat that almost matched his hair.2

“I do not recall the fellow’s uncle being so prudent,” Vinculus said around his apple, and shot a sideways glance at Childermass. “But you think he was onto something then? About the Letters not being read left to right?”

“We shall know soon enough,” replied Childermass, with a shrug.

 It was nightfall by the time they returned to York. The gas streetlamps glowed wanly against the plum sky and a thin drizzle had begun to fall, dusting Childermass’s and Vinculus’s hats. Almost three decades of saving his wages from Norrell had allowed Childermass to purchase a small but comfortable residency in York, close to home for both men.

There, Childermass had used these past three years to research the King’s Letters. His study (it still amused him that he should have a study of his own now) was stuffed with papers and sketches and old chipped bottles of ink. But Childermass cared not for tidiness; such things were lost to him in the fervor of translating the Letters.

After a year he discovered that the writing of John Uskglass’s made-up language bore resemblance to Elder Futhark, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and on occasion paleo-Hebrew. Since Faerie had no written language of its own, Childermass assumed that if you tried to read the written symbols with a Faerie dialect, the Book would become legible. He had been wildly successful in these regards.

So successful, in fact, that Childermass now knew in part what the King’s new Book contained (or at least the part that spanned Vinculus’s back). It shewed no longer a prophecy, but instructions to particular spells—spells of protection, of strength, or connection, illusion, joy; spells of easy passage and improvement. It was magic older than the land itself.

Childermass deduced that the horned circle with the line through it that appeared over and over again indicated “spoken,” as in the spell needed to be spoken aloud. The spiral with two lines through it, which was more rare, meant “sung,” and the curled, upwards slash meant only to think it.

At times, Childermass suspected that he should not know this so easily. There were mornings when he would wake from partially remembered dreams and just _know_ what a Letter meant. In those moments he would close his eyes and see a pale hand like a spider’s web drawing shapes on his eyelids. Then the moment would vanish, leaving Childermass with a queer sense of forgetfulness and an odd tingling over his eyeballs, lips, and heart.

Still, there was something missing; something that he had overlooked. Childermass shared what he could with the Learned Society, but he had yet to exhume a complete spell from the markings on Vinculus’s body. He could read only fragments of the text, sometimes getting as far as an entire clause before the words dissolved into nonsense. The missing parts nagged at him like a particularly sharp canker sore and often made him irritable.

Childermass thought of consulting the cards of Marseilles. He brought them out from time to time, but currently they were tucked away under a box or bedspring somewhere. They had lost much of their value, as the futures of men became unimportant and unneeded.

He found that somewhat of a relief.

 

 

 

An inked copy of the runes lay strewn across Childermass’s desk like a limp fish. The hour grew late, and while Vinculus chose to help himself to the pantry Childermass found himself poring over the text. He rubbed a faint, silvery line on his face as he worked, unaware that he was doing so. Childermass likewise had another sort of scar, bigger, gracing the skin along his left shoulder. Despite the severity of the wounds they once held, both scars had almost entirely faded and were barely visible.

Childermass rubbed the line on his face again, frowning at the text before him. It was only a small section of the Book, taken from either Vinculus’s inner arm or his right thigh, he could not remember. The words of the last Reader’s nephew rung in his ears, infuriatingly obscure: _“It is not meant to be read as a book is, from left to right, but in a different direction entirely.”_ Now if only he knew what that direction was.

Childermass tried reading right to left. He tried top to bottom, bottom to top. He even attempted diagonal (this one resulting in a rather peculiar phrase about a bonnet and a rabbit, which made no sense at all).

Finally, he could take it no longer and cried, “Vinculus!”

Vinculus shewed up a few moments later, brushing crumbs of what looked like a cold meat-pie from his blouse. “Well aren’t you a sight,” he said, grinning.3

Childermass ignored him. “What do you suppose the nephew meant?” he asked, and nodded at the runes. “I have tried reading these every which way and have come up with only the nonsensical.”

“Really?” Vinculus strode into the study and peered over at the text, squinting.4 He scratched his frizzled beard by the jawline. “Maybe you just think it is nonsensical.”

“No, this is certainly nonsensical. Cannot you think of anything?” asked Childermass, scowling. “See the lemniscate here—“he pointed—“it appears regularly and in different locations, but I cannot discern the pattern it makes.”

“You’re a shoddy Reader, evidently,” Vinculus pointed out.

“Why don’t you have a look at this then?” asked Childermass, irked.

“On the contrary,” Vinculus said. “You’re looking at it all wrong.”

Childermass frowned. “Beg your pardon?” Vinculus gave a snort. It sounded like a horse sneezing.

“Sure, John Uskglass wrote his stuff in a book so he could pass it on, but this—“Vinculus gestured to his body—“was never supposed to be on _paper._ Why don’t you try getting out of your silly little parchment? Reminds me of _him.”_

A muscle in Childermass’s jaw tightened. They had spent enough time in each other’s company now that it only took the bleakest of days, like to-day, for Vinculus’s goading to rile him. He considered retorting, but thought better of it.

“Very well,” he said.

 Childermass muttered something, bringing a hand up lazily to draw at the air. A luminous, blue-white rendition of the King’s Letters began to form itself in the air before them. Vinculus watched the symbols coalesce as if he were watching a particularly boring play. He found an escaped crumb on his shirt and popped it into his mouth.

When all of the Letters had formed in the air Childermass stood back and surveyed them with a thoughtful look. “That lemniscate looks as if it is meant to be spiraling downwards,” he observed. “Faeries were natural philocalists, so perhaps if I were to think in terms of an image or a grander pattern…”

Vinculus, having concluded his search for more crumbs, asked, “Do you reckon John Uskglass were to go through all that trouble? If he actually intended for people to read his work, he would have made it a bit simpler.” He shrugged his thin shoulders, yawned, and shifted his weight over to the other foot.

Something about the way Vinculus moved caught Childermass’s eye. “I don’t suppose…” he started, then shook his head. He stood there, contemplating for a moment longer before realization washed over him. “Yes, of course!”

In a sudden movement, Childermass lunged forward and began rearranging the glowing Letters before him. This time around, Vinculus watched him with quite a bit more interest. By the time Childermass had finished he was breathing hard, and spits of light from the Letters danced in his eyes.

“Zig-zag!” Childermass cried, gesturing to the new pattern of runes. “The Letters are meant to be read as a bolt of lightning might strike, in alternating directions!”

“Well look at that,” Vinculus marveled. “What does it say, then?”

Childermass returned to his desk, brushing some papers and envelopes aside5 and opening his legend of symbols. After several minutes, he concluded that these particular runes were instructions on performing a spell.

“A spell for what?”

“It appears to be a spell for…” Childermass’s eyes narrowed. “Unfinished Business.”

“Who’s Unfinished Business?” asked Vinculus.

Childermass shrugged. “It does not say.”

Vinculus cocked his head at the suspended glowing text and wiggled his fingers. “Give it a go, then. Couldn’t hurt.”

With an absent rub at his scar Childermass approached the Letters once more, translation book in his hand. He began to recite the spell while tracing the Letters with his other hand. The room became chilly, and the wax candle flame by Childermass’s desk flickered once.

Vinculus thought he heard the flapping of wings, in the distance.

Childermass froze after the spell ended, waiting. When nothing happened, he shook his head. “See, it did not work because I have no unfinished business,” he said.

“Rubbish,” Vinculus argued. “Everybody has Unfinished Business.”

“I must have mistranslated a part,” Childermass thought aloud. “We will try again to-morrow. Vinculus, you have been a great help to me this evening. You are dismissed.” Vinculus turned to leave, yawning unceremoniously.

“And don’t be stealing any more of my meat pies,” Childermass added, stomach growling.

 

 

 

Less than two hours after Childermass had retired he was roused by…well, he was not entirely sure what.

There was a tingle, a fissure of something dancing beneath his skin. Magic, Childermass suspected, as he had often felt during those instances where his previous master would practice spellwork in the wee hours of the morning. He lit a candle, slipped on a pair of boots, and went to his window.

There was a tall, gangly figure standing at the street corner. Several metres away, where the deli shop and the apothecary were supposed to have stood, there was only blackness.

Childermass walked down to the foyer and quietly left his house. The drizzle from earlier had eased up, leaving the night blanketed with a fine mist. The gas lamp at the corner had gone out, but Childermass did not need a lamp to recognize this person.

“Jonathan Strange,” he mused.

“Childermass? Is that you?” Strange came into view. His hair was longer and he was bearded, though the beard seemed to have grown in awkwardly and unkempt. Apart from that, Strange appeared almost exactly as he had three years ago.

“It is,” agreed Childermass.

“But why should I end up here?” Strange asked. He seemed to be talking more to himself than to Childermass. “I was just in… you did not try to summon me, did you?”

Childermass shook his head. “I do not believe so, Mr Strange. I was sleeping.”

Strange looked around him. “Well that is odd,” he exclaimed. “Tell me, where might I be and what year is it?”

“York and 1820, Mr Strange,” answered Childermass.

“York, ah yes, I suspected as much when I saw the town hall in the offing. But 1820! Why, it has felt like no time at all,” Strange said, seeming for the first time to recognize his surroundings. A large smile spread over his face. “Childermass, if only you knew! There are so many doors. They are everywhere, and all leading to different places!”

Childermass frowned. “To Faerie?” he asked.

“And more,” Strange replied, nodding. “We met the Black King in Faerie. We saw a land that was solely geometry and numbers; even a region in Hell where everybody communicates with their minds and by playing pentachords on a giant pipe organ. But there exist others as well! Why, just yesterday (but was it yesterday at all?) we found ourselves in a world that had whizzing metal contraptions with wheels, buildings as tall as the sky, and a—“ here Strange struggled for the right words—“a kind of circular pleasure wheel that could be seen from miles away!6 Can you imagine?”

“Not even remotely, Mr Strange,” said Childermass.

Strange sighed. “Pity, then.” He regarded Childermass with a furrowed brow. “Are you sure you did not do some sort of magic?”

“No,” Childermass lied.

“It would be impossible anyway,” Strange said. “We have all the books.”

An idea came to Childermass then. “Do you have Unfinished Business?” he asked Strange.

“Well of course I do,” replied Strange, as if Childermass was a simpleton for not spotting it. “There are so many places we have yet to explore, countless realms of mystical physics. But none in York, I do believe,” he added as an afterthought.

“What about Norrell?” Childermass asked.

“Norrell?” Strange frowned. “Why should he have Unfinished Business here?”

Childermass shrugged. “You tell me,” he said. He nodded at the Pillar of Darkness covering the deli and the apothecary. “Can he not come out?”

“Mr Norrell never comes out,” Strange informed him. “He is quite happy in there. With all my efforts I can barely get him to set foot in other worlds, but with this one I have utterly lost hope.”

_Lost Hope._ With his face half cast in the moon’s shadow Strange looked not like a man, but as if he were becoming the magic itself. And yet, that was not all. Childermass gave Strange a curious look. Something in Strange’s eye seemed guilty, almost. There was something… there. That was it. Apparently, to-night was a night for epiphanies.

Childermass said: “Perhaps Norrell has Unfinished Business with me.”

Strange fidgeted with the ends of his sleeves. “I believe a man should deal with his own business, Mr Childermass,” he began, sober, “but since Norrell cannot be persuaded…” Strange heaved another sigh. “He says he is sorry.”

“That he is sorry?” echoed Childermass.

“I do not know exactly what he did to send you away, but I know enough,” Strange said. “Sometimes he mentions you. He always seems to regret his decision, I believe.”

The two men were silent then; Childermass pondering in his night dress and boots and Strange standing there looking somewhat awkward since they were not really discussing magic at all.

“Although I tend to save my resentments for those of higher class, I do not fancy myself the type to hold a grudge,” Childermass admitted, finally. “Tell Norrell that he is forgiven.”

Strange nodded. “And what shall I tell him became of you?” he asked. To this, Childermass smiled.

“Tell him I am finally achieving my purpose,” he said.

 

 

 

“Mr Segundus,” Childermass told Vinculus late the next morning, “has informed me that _The Life of Jonathan Strange_ is to be published in September.”

Vinculus was seated in Childermass’s study, writing a letter to Dr Foxcastle on the issue of meeting decorum or some other, hair in his face and a rather sadistic expression gracing his features. He wrote leaned back, parchment supported by a book in his lap. His bare feet were propped up on the desk. Vinculus could read well enough but his grammar was uncouth and his penmanship atrocious, so Childermass generally left letters to Dr Foxcastle in Vinculus’s good graces.

“Already? I think that fellow must sleep less than you do,” Vinculus replied, as Childermass doffed his coat and hat.

Childermass smacked Vinculus’s feet off the desk. “Indeed. He already talks of another compilation of Strange’s documents.” 7

“The lad certainly has an obsession,” Vinculus agreed. He wet his thumb, wiped a spot of ink from his parchment, and asked, “What will you tell him of your visit to Derbyshire?”

“That it was most informative and should give us a great advantage in translating the King’s Letters,” replied Childermass.

Vinculus looked up from his letter to Dr Foxcastle. He observed Childermass in a light mood, or at least, what passed for a light mood with him. Certainly lighter than the previous day. “So you shall lie like the rest of them, Mr Childermass?” he said, teasing.

Childermass gave a sly, one-sided grin. It was the grin that he reserved for such occasions where he knew more than he was letting on, usually at the expense of someone else’s good day.

“I shall do nothing of the sort,” he said.

“Do you mean to say that spell worked?” asked Vinculus, raising his eyebrows. Childermass merely busied himself with matters around the study, smiling out of the corner of his eye.

Vinculus set down his pen. “It worked, didn’t it?” He snorted. “Well paint me blue and cover me with feathers! What was it like?”

“Old,” said Childermass after some deliberation, paused over a box of worn-down pen nibs. “And working in ways that were most unexpected.”

Vinculus was grinning. Most of his antics were a tarp, not unlike the dirty yellow curtain that used to cover the entrance to his booth on Threadneedle Street, which Vinculus used to veil the fact that he was just as excited as Childermass was. He knew Childermass had seen through his curtain years ago, just as he knew that magic in England was going to become something beautiful once again.

“Well it is the Raven King’s magic, so you cannot really _expect_ anything,” Vinculus pointed out.

“True,” Childermass nodded, “but it worked in such a way that brought only good. I look forward to Reading the whole text.”

“I shall drink to that.”

Childermass’s lip curled up. “No you shan’t, you have paperwork to do.” Vinculus rolled his eyes and returned to his letter. He thought about including his usual remarks on Dr Foxcastle’s girth, but decided against it this once because it was turning out to be a splendid day.

Childermass gathered several drawings of text in his arms and supposed that perhaps, in another time and place, Mr Norrell would even be proud. Complaining most definitely, but proud.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, likely somewhere in a dimension beyond our own, may have possessed all the books on and of magic, but there were two magicians in rainy little York who had the World in their hands.

There was much ahead.

 

_End._

 

* * *

 

 

Footnotes:

1 Greek valerian, also called Jacob’s ladder, is a purple flower than can be found in Derbyshire.

2 Breeches (short pants) had fallen out of style by the 1820s. After that point, only male servants and footmen continued to wear breeches. The fact that Childermass purchased pantaloons and not breeches for Vinculus signifies that he on some level considered Vinculus as an equal.

3 Childermass would not have known if he was a sight or not. Not that he spent time admiring his reflection before, but after the Revival Childermass avoided mirrors when he could. There were none in the house. He was not afraid, per say, but uneasy that something might emerge from them.

4 Soon after employing Vinculus as his partner in business, Childermass discovered that the man was quite presbyopic. There is a magnifying glass sitting in the study, though to this day he is unsure if Vinculus actually uses it or not.

5 Many of these envelopes included letters from Lady Wintertowne, who wrote to Childermass on occasion. Her visits were infrequent on the basis that she wanted nothing whatsoever to do with magic, but she continued to support Childermass from afar. Most of Lady Wintertowne’s time was spent in the company of Arabella Strange, who had moved back to England and was currently residing in the well-endowed Wintertowne estate (such endowments coming from her ex-husband, Walter Pole).

6 The place they actually emerged in was twenty-first century London. Here Strange is describing the London Eye. 

7 _Letters and Miscellaneous Papers of Jonathan Strange,_ another piece edited by Mr Segundus.

 

 


End file.
